


departure

by fishcola



Series: sommeil [1]
Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: (explicit violence & bloody scenes depicted in the narrative), (no sex but ignoring boundaries & obsessive / stalking behavior), (suicidal ideation & depression symptoms clearly depicted), (thematic allusions to other mental health symptoms are very strong), Angst, Explicit Language, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Violence, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-05 06:15:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18360293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishcola/pseuds/fishcola
Summary: There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.— Tennessee Williamsbrian's not sleeping. he's eating, he's laughing, he's working, he's smiling (too much).but pat knows he'snot. fucking. sleeping.





	1. the call

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part 1 of a 3-part angst/hurt/comfort/drama/horror/love story. I think you could get away with just reading part 1, if you want to avoid the love but wanted a very dark (see tags) emotion bomb friendship mystery. General warning: this story is fucked up the whole way. *I* think it has a happy ending, but my favorite book is _Lolita_ , so think about if you want to trust your most delicate emotions to me before you get invested.
> 
> hit the work endnotes for warnings about parts 2 and 3 & their dubcon/noncon, because you might want to know before you get committed to the storyline. no underage or character death, but EVERYTHING ELSE. >>;
> 
> ~~~ HEY YO THESE PEOPLE ARE GOOD ~~~  
> poppyseedheart read this shit when it was in its infancy: a screaming wailing mass of pretentious painful emotional beats with no fun bits or resolution whatsover. they read it so passionately and deeply and kindly and cleverly that i could finish it instead of trashing it. not a beta so much as a midwife. also helped me chill out some italics.
> 
> Johnny_Kielbasa read this shit even though it's not their kind of thing. read it with a close focus and humor that made the jokes pop and helped me know what was working. thx hon. also thanks for laughing at all the dick jokes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am...only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths. 
> 
> **— Ernesto Che Guevara**

 

It isn’t until the last day of E3 that Pat realizes Brian isn’t sleeping.  

Oh, he’s _lying down_ , sure. They’re fucking roommates, for chrissakes. Give Pat _some_ credit.  

Brian is doing all the normal shit. Circling up with the video team when the long filming day is done, even when he’s not on editing duty. Cracking jokes around his yawns, jokes that are sharp as a tack but not pointed _at_ anyone, in particular. Saying that he _really should get to sleep_ and slipping off to ostensibly wash up when he’s really sneaking Pat’s Switch out of his bag and leveling his Pokémon _again_ , just to keep him from bitching about how annoying it is in the new game.

Pat’s never roomed with Brian before, but he figures it’ll be normal enough. And it is. Brian’s jittery in new situations, nervous, but he’s so fucking _clever_ that he spins his scratchy, fraying, anxiety straw into comedy gold. Pat’s jealous, because E3 makes him sullen and grumpy without turning up such riches, but he can’t bring himself to be too much of a dick about it. Even tangential contact with Brian helps soothe his aching burnout from people overexposure. Brian doesn’t stare at him, or need anything from him, or brush against him unsettlingly, just sits quietly on the upper bunk in exhausted solidarity and plays Pat’s Switch with the volume on low and offers down snatches of conversation whenever Pat feels like it. The kid’s foot hanging down is oddly comforting as Pat drifts off to sleep, doubly so when he wiggles it warningly after Pat makes an uncouth joke about his full-length pajamas.

Brian’s maybe starting to fray a little, so Pat tries to keep a close eye. Things seem...within range of normal, for working his first convention. Brian gets worn out from walking the convention floor. Brian picks at his dinner. Brian changes in the bathroom. Brian slides into bed. Brian fiddles with his phone or his Switch, and Brian’s foot hangs down, and Brian talks to Pat. And Pat falls asleep.

And Pat wakes up, and Brian’s already awake.

Which is _pretty fuckin’ unlikely,_ because Pat’s dad got up at 0400 hours and his mom was a teacher who got to work through the rural Maine snowfalls, and Pat gets up at the asscrack of dawn, _no matter what._

It just doesn’t make any fucking sense, that when his eyes snap open in the grey pre-dawn and he’s begging his body _please...just a few more hours...fucking_ _please_ _...it’s Pacific time..._ that Brian is already up and showered and clean and pressed and has made coffee, if Pat would like some?

Pat’s Pokémon jumped _ten levels_ last night. Brian isn’t sleeping.  

Of course, none of them are really sleeping. E3 is a fucking marathon. No amount of stage makeup can hide how much they each look like dogshit by the end of the weekend. Jeff leans leadenly on the wall of the Sony booth while waiting for his appointment. Simone keeps taking micro-naps in the middle of eating chicken tenders, somehow. And at the end of the last bone-snappingly skin-scrapingly mind-blankingly tired day they all fucking blow the chance at a restful night’s sleep by huddling together and shit-talking and swapping sloppy gin bottles and reveling in desperate, delirious mirth at each others’ company.  

Like everyone, Brian is drinking hard and laughing harder, on the last night. Patrick is doing the same.  

But he’s also watching.  

At some point past three, the party collapses, as all parties eventually do. A few people are asleep, a few others realize in a striking moment of sobriety that the passage of time is not, in fact, governed by alcohol consumption and tomorrow will come and when it does it is going to be _bad_. The group disbands with half-hearted ‘nights’ to scramble for aspirin and water and spare sheets and whatever other talismans they can find against the coming dawn.  

Brian is prone, in a pile of pillows. Pretending, maybe, to be passed out. But Pat can see the heel of his hand clicking back and forth rhythmically, an anxious tic which puts the lie to his relaxed posture.  

He tips Brian with his shoe. “Get up and go to bed, kid.”  

“Right,” Brian says, sounding dazed. He doesn’t move.  

“Seriously. I know you’re drunk, but you’ve got a chance to sleep it off. When do we have to get to the airport?”

“Nine.” Brian says, still from the floor. “But I have to go a little early and drop off my rental.”

Pat shakes his head. The world spins a bit, in protest. “Why the fuck did you rent a car?”

Brian rises, shrugs. “Wanted to. C’mon, you’re right. You’ve gotta sleep too.”  

They both proceed to their room, and take turns going through the half-hearted ministrations of a nightly routine, in the truncated and inefficient way you do when you are away from home and very drunk. Pat goes first: he just splashes water on his face and shoves a brush at his teeth a few times. They still taste of tequila, but now with a sheen of minty freshness. Gross.

Brian gets off the day’s makeup more carefully, scrubbing hard with a washcloth. Pat might be imagining it, but it seems like he scrubs a bit too long, like maybe he gets caught up in the motion and doesn’t want to give it up.  

The room is dim, when Brian emerges from the bathroom, but he checks his phone at the right second— the bluish-white light flashes over his cheeks, bright in the darkness.

Pat hisses. “Shit, Brian. You look like hell.”  

“But tell me how it really is, Pat,” Brian says lightly, moving past him without pausing.   

“No, listen.” Pat steps forward, swaying only a bit. Puts a hand on Brian’s arm.  

The younger man flinches, hard. He steps jerkily away.  

Pat is surprised. And then, he is surprised that his hand doesn’t detach from Brian’s arm in surprise. Instead, in fact, he grips harder in surprise and steps along with Brian, in surprise. They are quite close now, closer than it is perhaps socially acceptable for two friends to be.  

“I’m good. Just tired.” Brian says, in that same light tone.

But he doesn’t look _just tired_. The bags under his eyes are an absolute fucking work of art. Like they’ve been there for a while, and they’d taken some doing. Pat toys with the idea that maybe he’d gotten in a fight. A fight with two perfectly symmetrical punches from an opponent with tiny, accurate fists.  

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fresh as a daisy tomorrow.” Brian puts his hand over Pat’s hand, and starts to push it off. His laugh is thready. “I’ll be the least hungover. I’ll even get donuts.”

Pat opens his mouth to make a joke, but it gets trumped up with six other thoughts he is simultaneously thinking, and comes out like, “I’m not an idiot, Brian.”

Brian freezes. He doesn’t finish shaking the hand off. “My face is that bad, huh.”  

His voice sounds odd. Pat doesn’t understand why. He also doesn’t understand why he hasn’t let go of Brian yet.  

“What’s wrong, dude? You haven’t fucking slept all weekend.”

“It happens sometimes.” The effort of saying this, even though it isn’t an answer, even though it explains nothing, seems to settle on Brian like a weight. He doesn’t elaborate.

“Are you going to sleep tonight?”

Brian’s eyes dart to the bed, quickly, and then back to Pat’s face. “I can try, if you want.”

“So that’s a no.”

Brian closes his eyes, expression blank. He doesn’t admit it.  

On impulse: “Let’s go for a walk, then.”

“Okay.”

 

 


	2. the ordinary world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.
> 
>  
> 
> **— Hans Christian Andersen**

LA is kind of a beautiful city at night.  

Not the _city_ city, of course. The architecture is mostly blocky terrible seventies stuff, and everything is dirty, and the sidewalks are so fucked up that even in heart of downtown it takes all your concentration to pick a path that doesn’t trip your ass up or land you in a plywood-and-traffic-cone dead end. Pat hate/loves it, wandering under the weird splotchy lights that are never spaced out quite right, staring through windows into fancy apartments and crumbling townhouses, crossing stark, invisible lines of gentrification that trace out the ancient waterways where dreams used to flow differently.

They walk aimlessly for a while, Brian and Pat, not choosing a direction but never hesitating either.  

At three-thirty, the streets finally get kind of quiet. You can appreciate things. The weird mash of colored lights from billboards and juice stores and hookah bars. The outlines of palm trees, almost invisible against the dirty grey sky. The bark of dogs, responding for miles to the woop of a siren, their answering yelps echoing through the weirdly empty streets.  

“People here get their beauty rest,” Brian whispers, as if trying not to wake them up.  

“Yeah. Not like back home. New York’s crazy.”

LA’s crazy in a different way. At this hour, LA feels like the apocalypse. Like you’re on a stakeout. Like you’re meeting the kidnappers under the bridge. Like you jumped the fence on a film set and are looking around trying to figure out what kind of movie they were shooting earlier today.  

It’s impossible to fall into step, on this jagged sidewalk. “D’you consider New York home?”  

Pat shrugs. “Eh. Close enough.”

“I guess,” Brian says, doubtful.  

Conversation doesn’t come easy right now, when they’re both so exhausted, and so talked-out. It turns into just a sort of slow-motion free association game. A question. A pause. Twenty steps. An answer. A pause. Ten more steps. Another question.

“What’s Baltimore like, at night?”

Brian huffs a laugh, and pushes his hair out of his face. “Not as bad as it looks on TV. Really pretty, actually.” He pauses, eyes Patrick. “But when you visit, don’t go for three-AM walks.”

“Fair.”  

They continue to pick their way through winding residential roads that stop, suddenly, intersect with little pieces of city, empty office buildings and late-night diners and freeways over their heads.  

“That’s the building from Blade Runner.” Brian points out, as they hit a major street and turn to walk along it for a block, before diving back up a narrow one. “Have you ever been mugged?”

“No. Though I think my mom tried to make me get two wallets, when I moved to New York.”

“That works sometimes.” Brian is watching the curb as they walk.  

“You know from experience?”

“I never tried it.”

“Ah.”

The next question should by rights be Brian’s, and should pull them back, into some more surface-level topic like middle-school music preferences, but Pat is too sleep-deprived to let the thought pass.

“I don’t know if I’d have the balls. I hear you’re just supposed to do what they say.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brian shrugs. “They just want the cash and the phone. Unless they’re really weird. The first time I got mugged, they took my glasses, but they let me keep my wallet. Like, what the fuck?”

Pat wasn’t expecting that. His step falters. “Whoa.”

“No one needs an underage ID, I guess.” Brian gestures, by way of explanation.

It’s not good, to think about that. Someone stopping Brian, when he was a gangly teen.

Something of this must show on his face, because Brian stops walking and touches his arm. “Hey, it was fine. I found a cop in like, ten minutes. I didn’t even have, like, a good phone back then.”

Pat nods. Then he just goes ahead and asks. “What about the second time?”

Brian smiles, but this one is a little keener, sharper. “Oh, I see, we’re doing deep revelations tonight.” He raises an eyebrow. “In that case, I get to ask about your first girlfriend.”

“Sure,” Pat says, and although the pause is there, he doesn’t even collect himself to make a joke.  

They’re walking again, a street that’s oddly sweet and old-fashioned, except the overpasses. “What was she like?”

“Kinda goofy.” Brian seems to want more, so Pat throws his mind back, searching for a hint of any interesting memory. “Short. Pretty, I thought, but wore sweatpants every day. We were in film production class together.”  

“Cute. You asked her out?”  

“Yeah. To homecoming, or something stupid like that.”

“Not stupid if she said yes.”

“It was stupid. We both hated dances. But we bonded over hating it. Not a very interesting story, sorry. I was lame. We probably made out a dozen times. That’s all.”

The look over Brian’s shoulder is wry. “Please don’t pretend you were lamer than me in high school, Pat. Theater geek, remember? I think every kiss I got was playing spin the bottle in the marching band bus.”  

Brian finds a bench—sits down unexpectedly. He looks off into the distance.

“Yeah well, contrary to what you’ve heard, film production kids weren’t getting a ton of pussy, either.”

He sits with Brian. They can’t sit next to next to each other, because the bench has strange rounded dividers between seats. Instead, they sit in parallel.  

“The second time was bad.” Brian’s voice hitches a bit. Pat doesn’t think it would have done that, in the daytime. Brian’s too good an actor to let things like that slip, in the light. “I was with a friend. She screamed, and they hit her. I’ve never been so fucking scared in my life, Pat.”  

“Shit, kid. Was she okay?”

“Yeah. They didn’t really want to bang us up, just shake us down quick. They drove up in a civic, can you believe that? A fucking _civic_ , Pat.”

Pat doesn’t say anything, for a minute, even though that’s supposed to be a joke. Even though Brian’s looking at him with that kind of frantic grin, that one that means cmon, yes-and me here, let’s have a conversation about best cars for muggings instead.  

“Jesus Christ, Bri. Multiple guys?”  

“Yeah. I was being stupid.” Brian cuts him off. His voice is a little louder than Pat’s used to it being, and maybe a touch more hollow. “It was my fault. Sometimes I say things before I think. If I’d just shut up, it would have gone better. They didn’t want anything with her. Just cash.”  

Pat doesn’t know what to do with that.  

“I’m sorry,” he says, but Brian doesn’t reply.

Pat has to let the silence stretch. He’s already overstepped, with his questions. Still. He wonders what Brian said. Whether he even remembers what he said. Whether he said it while trying to get between them and his friend. Probably. That’s the kind of thing Brian would do. Say something quick and step up into the way and end up—

 _I was being stupid._  

He wonders if they hit him, too. Christ. Hopefully not—

—the image, of Brian’s head bouncing off of concrete, of blood, is vivid, and Pat looks up into a yellowy streetlight to blot it out. He’s fucking tired. When he gets tired, his brain’s like this. Can’t think of what to say. Forgets to make jokes. Sees things, without his permission.

“It’s almost dawn,” Brian says, points. You can’t see the horizon, of course. Not here. Just buildings, billboards, parked cars. But it’s getting warm, sure and steady, not sticky or sudden, just the night air ebbing away to perpetual perfect summer as the black leaks out of the sky.

“Fuck. We’ve got to get back.” Pat glares at it, the hateful little heather-grey glow that starts to take hold. He doesn’t want to face tomorrow. Not that today was so great. But it had its moments. This is one.

“Let’s watch the sun rise,” Brian says, and although he doesn’t say _please_ Pat hears it. “Then we’ll go.”

They do watch it, until the haze clears and the morning is warm and their bodies are aching with the wrongness of it all, of no birds, of distant traffic humming, of the bright impeccable blue of the sky.

  


 

 

They’re not next to each other, on the plane back to New York. But he can see Brian in his seat on the aisle. He’s reading, almost as soon as they sit down. Some old book with a green cover.  

It’s a bumpy ride, but Pat manages some sleep. Every time he starts up from turbulence, Brian is still just sitting there, chin propped up on his hand, staring at his book, waving away the drink cart with blue-tipped fingers and a quick smile that slides off his face fast and painful.  

 


	3. the refusal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the final no, there comes a yes,  
> and on that yes the future world depends 
> 
>  
> 
> **\- Wallace Stevens**

They’ve been back about a week, and Brian looks considerably better. Hair fluffier, words pour out faster and more natural. He still looks tired. But not like he’s been hit by a train.   

Pat tries to keep an eye on him without _keeping an eye_ , because Brian can get real touchy about that. Once, Pat told Tara that Brian was worn out and needed an extension on a due date—she gave it to him, of course—but he was so ticked off by Pat’s meddling that he finished the project 20 hours early out of spite.  

So Pat hangs back. Just asks Brian for coffee, for lunch. Kid’s researching something like a maniac. When he gets like that, Pat asks him out to lunch, because if he doesn’t then Brian will stay at his desk and eat junk all day. Not that Pat’s in a position to police others’ eating habits. He knows his own are trash. But it’s fucking _frustrating_ , watching Brian slurp down cup ramen without getting a single solitary spot on his shirt, even though his eyes are fixed to his computer screen in a thoughtful frown. Pat can’t trust himself not to spill a fucking _sandwich_ , and it’s just not fair. It’s really to save his own pride, that he drags the kid out to go find some real food, which is just pizza anyway.

It’s good, though. The pizza, and the conversation. Brian’s got some pretty unorthodox views on pizza. Namely that Detroit is the best place to get it. This is clearly wrong, and Pat forces him to get pizza three days in a row as punishment for his sins, until Brian reminds him that school-lunch pizza on those stale french breads was amazing. His description — _like a giant bagel bite_ — really hits that nostalgia button for Pat, and he’s glad that at least there’s some childhood experiences that stay put across the gap of years.

So Brian is forgiven for pizza crimes. They joke, they eat, they work, and Brian is _mostly_ normal. He seems a little... _off_ …sometimes, but it’s hard to put into words, and as soon as Pat thinks he’s got a handle on it, Brian flashes a smile and shrugs and moves on to the next topic. Pat decides it’s not his business to pry.  

  
  
  
  
  


Until a few weeks later. Pat gets a text while he’s at work.  

> **hey Pat!! it’s Laura. bdg’s sister**

They’ve met a few times in person—shooting goofy videos at Brian’s place, picking him up from the airport, stuff like that. Laura seems a lot like Brian—bright and quick and funny and bold. They know each other, but she’s never texted him before.  

> **Hi laura, whats up?**
> 
> **just wanted to say ty for letting Brian stay at your place this week  
>  ** **he won’t tell me what’s wrong  
>  but im glad he’s talking to someone.  
>  ** **can you let me know if there’s anything i should do?**

He glances up at Brian’s desk.  

Brian’s there, and he’s working—or looking like he’s working. At least, he’s scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. He looks tired, strung-out. Pat had thought it was the Unraveled script that was stressing him so much, this week, but they’ve almost gotten ahead of it, for once. So why are his fingernails chewed down to red nubs, and his hands shake distinctly when they brush through his frazzled hair?

It’s just so _unlike_ Brian, to lie to anyone at all. Especially his sister.

It’s not particularly unlike Pat, though, so he does.   

> **Of course.  
>  ** **I’ll try to get him to talk to you, soon**
> 
> **thanks!!!  
>  youre so important to him  
>  it means a lot.  **

Pat stands up and walks over to Brian. The kid doesn’t notice him until he’s close. Jumps. Closes a window swiftly, but it didn’t look like porn. Just text.  

“Hey, Pat!” Brian smiles brightly. Because he’s looking quite hard, Pat can see the twitch, the panicked look, the way his face is just altogether _odd_ , in color. It’s so small, he would have missed it. But it’s there.  

Pat doesn’t say anything, just slides his phone across the table and lets Brian read the screen.  

He crumples. Hitches a panicked breath. “I—”

“You wanna come over tonight and explain?” Pat asks, gently. More gently than he intended, when he walked over here. His annoyance at being roped into a lie is obliterated by the quick look of raw _fear_ which splashes over the kid’s face.  “I’m not mad. I just wanna know what’s going on.”

“I c-can’t—” his voice is skittering around his breath, as if getting both out at the same time is becoming increasingly impossible. “—c-can’t come over—not tonight—”

Pat raises an eyebrow. “Got plans?”

Brian nods, and his knuckles are white where they grip the edge of his desk.  

So Pat knows what a panic attack looks like and this looks kind of like that, and maybe the smart thing is to move away and give the kid some space. He can always ask later. What’s it his business, anyway, if Brian’s got secrets from his sister? Pat feels weird, being in on the secret without being _in on it,_ but he’d be a hypocrite if he said he hadn’t panicked and lied and pulled a name out of thin air, before.  

But when Pat goes to move away, Brian stands suddenly, grabs his arm. The violence of the movement—it’s _quick_ as a flash—startles Pat but also seems to startle Brian himself, who looks at Pat’s arm in his grip as if he’s not sure how his own body got him there.  

Fingernails would be digging into Pat’s skin, if Brian had any fingernails.   

“You won’t—will you tell her?”

The voice is a near-silent whisper, and it sounds fucking _terrified_.

“I dunno what to tell her, Bri,” Pat manages, evenly. “What’s the big deal?”

“Please—you _can’t. Please_ , Pat.” The grip is still bruising-tight, but he can feel the way Brian’s hand is shaking now. Not like a tremor. It’s strange, like he’s a tuning fork, and someone has just struck. “God. I will literally— _please._ As a friend. If you _ever_ liked me—”

Pat is confused by the past tense. “Brian. Okay. Okay. I’m not telling her. Stop freaking out, now?”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Brian sighs out in a rush, lets go. He looks at his own hand for a half second, wipes it across his cheek. He looks a shambles, but Pat can barely put together why before Brian’s moving, jerks his hand in a vague direction and runs off. “I’m—I’ve got to—”

“Me too,” says Pat firmly, and follows him.

  
  


 

 

 

It takes Brian a while to shake Pat off. He near-runs to the bathroom, and Pat feels like a creep lurking in the hallway, playing with his phone—but he rubs his arm, and remembers Brian’s _face_ , and waits. The kid does emerge, eventually, looking slightly less terrified but still oddly sick, like maybe he’s recovering from the flu and not quite steady on his feet.  

He brushes past Pat without looking at him, flees into the workday—meetings, skype calls, other bullshit. Pat tries to keep an eye, but eventually Pat has to do something and Brian doesn’t and then the kid is fucking _gone._  

Pat does catch a glimpse of him, leaving. He’s up in the conference room, but the windows are high and look out over the street, and Brian’s yellow jeans stick out against the gloomy grey concrete.

Brian’s pacing, fast and jerky, outside the subway. One hand grips his backpack, the other is—

—what the _fuck_ , Brian doesn’t _smoke_ —

but he takes what is unmistakably a long drag on a cigarette and flings the butt off into the gutter, before disappearing into the underground.  


	4. the meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,  
> dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,  
> angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
> 
>  
> 
> **— Allen Ginsberg**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: worried mentions of drugs & illness. nothing explicit.

After that day, Pat starts putting together clues in earnest. He pushes shit off his plate. Asks around the office. Does reconnaissance. And yeah, maybe he does abuse a couple sudo commands. Fuck you.  

He might be a shitty unethical friend and useradmin, but he’s going to figure this out.  

Brian apparently returns to sleeping at home, at least for a while. Pat finds this out by texting Laura and asking her out for coffee. To talk. About Brian. 

She accepts right away, and Pat pushes away guilty awkwardness —which is only a little hard, when she comes in and shakes his hand and laughs just like Brian does and then gets serious just like Brian does.

“I’m not going to spill his secrets,” Pat lies. “So I can’t go into it. But I just wanted to ask how he’s doing.”  

“Of course,” Laura leans forward, her hands around her latte and her face open and concerned and relieved. He bets that she never lies either. “He still hasn’t told me anything, though, Pat. I’m so fucking worried about him. He gets sad, he gets worn out…but it’s never been like…not like this.” 

“How long has it been going on?”  

“Months,” she admits. “Although it wasn’t like, a big change. I barely noticed at first. He was just a little off, and then a little more, for so long. More jittery. Angry, sometimes. Quiet.” 

“He wouldn’t fucking sleep at E3,” Pat admits, because he has to give her  _ something _ . “We roomed together. Didn’t sleep a goddamn wink.”  

“Is he…” she looks up, sadly. “…does he still have the nightmares?”  

Pat thinks fast. “He told you about those?” 

“No. He won’t say anything, not to me, or Jonah. We just heard him screaming, a couple nights.” 

“Yeah,” Pat nods, hopefully in a way that seems like he’s agreeing in worried solidarity with the club of people-who-have-witnessed-Brian’s-nightmares and not filing away new information desperately into the drive in his brain titled What The Fuck Is Wrong With Brian. 

“He was so loud, Pat—” she looks up at him, haunted. “The first night, I thought he was getting  _ murdered _ . Jonah went in with a baseball bat but he was just—screwed up in bed—screaming loud as anything—he was so hard to wake up—” 

“It seems like they come and go,” Pat ventures, based on his carefully-curated calendar of every hour of paid time off Brian has taken this year, cross-referenced with all the data from office stories of Brian drifting off mid-sentence. “Every few weeks.” 

Laura nods. “Yeah. He keeps away from home when they’re bad—I mean. Sorry. Obviously. You know that. I guess he…he doesn’t want to bother me and Jonah…” 

It pains her heart, Pat sees, that Brian is theoretically bothering Pat with something that he can’t let her help with. She has some questions, and she wants to fling them at Pat and see if she can shake out anything that he knows. They’re doing the same dance, sort of. 

She’s about to ask something that’s probably too clever, so he blurts out boldly: “Dyou think you could convince him to knock off the cigarettes?”  

“What—” Her face contorts, distracted.  

“Oh, fuck,” Pat winces, pretends to be mad at himself. “Fuck. I swore, Laura. That I wouldn’t blow up his spot. Not until he’s ready to talk about…about himself.” He sighs. “But fuck. This is different. It’s not personal. It’s just fucking poison, and he’s not listening to me.”  

“I didn’t know—god.  _ God _ . That’s so not like him, Patrick.” 

“I know. Look, maybe you start there. See if you can get him to talk to you about it? It’s, like, a secondary thing but—he’s self-medicating, and he’s probably doing some other self-destructive shit I don’t know about, and that’s as big of a problem as anything else.” 

Laura nods sadly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s—that’s good. I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“Let me know if anything gets worse? On your end.”

“Of course.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Things do, in fact, get worse. 

Laura calls on a muggy August evening, when Pat’s lying on his bed sweaty-stubborn, fighting the urge to turn on his AC. “Brian’s—is he coming home, tonight?” 

“Dunno,” Pat lies, although in truth only the tone is a lie. The easy way he says it. Like he might know.

Brian’s been…  _ off…  _ for three days, looking half-dead and stumbling, hands grasping at things either too hard or too light. Pens drop to the floor. Cups are crushed. He steadfastly refuses Pat’s invitations to lunch or coffee or dinner or  _ anything _ that involves them being in a room together where Pat might get to  _ ask him a fucking question _ . Yet apparently, Laura thinks he’s staying at Pat’s again tonight. Fuck. 

“Can I talk to him?” she says, a bit raggedly, like she’s been crying. “I’m so fucking worried, Pat.”

“He’s out walking,” Pat lies. “He’s been doing that a lot, when he can’t sleep. I’m gonna be honest, Laura, I don’t really know what the fuck is going on. He’s not giving me a lot.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I… dyou know if he’s been to a doctor, at least?”

“Yes,” Pat says definitively, because he’s absolutely committed a felony, but it wasn’t very hard to guess Brian’s desktop PIN, since he enters it in front of Pat every day, and then it’s only two clicks to find the page where health insurance claims go. “Not too long ago. I don’t know the details—got some bloodwork, at least.”  

“Good,” she sighs. “I was…well. For a while I was afraid he was like…that he had cancer or something…and he wouldn’t tell us…” 

“He’s not getting chemo,” Pat assures her, because he’s worried that too, sat up at night in the dark and scrambled for his laptop and pulled open WebMD and desperately tried to figure out if Brian’s patterns of sleeplessness might sync up to kidney dialysis or manganese poisoning or early-onset Parkinson’s, Jesus, who knew the number of things that could keep you from sleeping. 

He runs a shaking hand through his hair, and Laura’s voice reaches out through the phone, calming herself as much as him. “I don’t think it’s something like that. I think he would tell me. If he was sick. This is—it’s just weird, Pat. I don’t want to—you’re really important to him. I’m not going to push. But please, tell me if there’s something I need to know. I would do  _ anything  _ for him.” 

“I will,” Pat promises, and he means it. “As soon as I figure out how to help, you’ll be the first to know.” 

This, as it turns out, is a lie.

 

 

 

 

 

During the next episode, Brian isn’t easy to find. He takes the week off, goes on vacation. At work he nonchalantly mentions he might take a road trip to Baltimore. Laura doesn’t seem to know anything about this plan, though, and so neither of them really know where he is for six days.  

He posts on twitter a couple times. They’re not great posts, but at least Pat knows he’s alive.  

When he gets back, he’s thinner. It doesn’t look healthy. The way his collar bones jut out.  

Pat toys with the idea that he might be addicted to drugs. But he doesn’t think snorting coke is something that goes into remission, not the way this thing does. After Brian comes back, he eats a few lunches with Pat with gusto, and the color comes back into his face, and he seems better.  

For a while.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter of worry kidz sorry for suspense.   
> next chapter you get something to worry ABOUT.


	5. crossing the threshold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **— Franz Kafka**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: some physical violence & body horror. oblique reference to possible self-harm. lots of drama.

When it happens again, in October, Pat is finally ready with a plan.  

He spots the tremors, first. He only notices because he knows the timing, by now. Brian has gotten good at hiding them. How they thrill across the skin oddly, like a shiver from cold, but more sustained. They roll up from his feet and end in his fingers. When they happen, he hides them with little movements—a stifled yawn, a hair toss, a stretch.  

Pat sees that Brian’s worn long sleeves three days in a row, and so he goes for it.  

Following Brian turns out to be easy. He’s distracted, walking in that jerky, half-fast way. Pat loses him on crowded subway, but then spots him on the far side of the car, standing near the door. His arm is holding the strap for balance above his head. It has the sleeve hitched up a little. There’s a bandage wrapped around his wrist. Pat’s heart jerks.  

Brian’s getting off. Then on. Then off. Pat follows him, a few transfers, until he pushes through a turnstile in Jersey and darts up, quickly, into the fading daylight.  

He watches as Brian heads toward a hotel room. He’s not checking in. He’s already got his room key out, in trembling fingers, and Pat nearly runs, because he needs to get close enough.  

The door’s open. Brian’s hurrying in, and shutting it.  

Pat’s knee bangs it open, and it’s loud, and Brian gasps in surprise and jerks up a protective hand and Pat’s already shoved past and into the room and the door is shutting behind him and he’s staring at Brian and Brian’s staring at him and Brian’s eyes are wild.  

“Pat?” 

The terror is familiar, this time, the wash through Brian’s face of anguish and fear—wrenching, screaming fear. Pat forces the empathy out of his body, though, because he’s in fucking Newark in some seedy motel and no matter what Brian’s doing—drugs, hookers, meeting with blackmailers—Pat is going to be here.  

“What’s going on,” he spits out, bluntly, and because he’s already intruding, this is already grossly inappropriate, he’s already committed a couple of crimes, he just grabs Brian’s arm and shoves up the sleeve and examines the bandage.  

Brian yanks it away. 

He shouldn’t be  _ able  _ to yank it away. Pat’s stronger, and bigger, and he had two hands on the kid’s scrawny forearm, but nonetheless he’s now ripped his body far from Pat and is halfway across the room. 

“ _ God _ , no,” Brian says, doubling over, his hands in his hair.

“Brian,” Pat lifts a hand, trying to gentle him. 

Brian’s not listening, though. He’s pulling hard on his hair, and begging unknown gods for forgiveness.  “Oh  _ please _ , God, no. Please no.” 

Pat’s not sure what to do, to ease him through whatever panic this is. He steps forward. “Just tell me—” 

“Leave,” Brian growls, and sudden-sharp he’s up in Patrick’s space again. A hand slams into Pat’s collarbone, an open hand, but it’s like a punch. Pat loses his balance— the stupid TV crunches into his lower back — he stumbles, half-falls. 

“ _ Shit _ , dude.”

Brian’s fierce and fucking  _ strong _ . He shoves again, and  _ again _ , and Pat slides along the dresser, surprised by how easily the kid can throw him around. “Goddammit Patrick,  _ leave _ .” 

“No,” Pat says, and grabs the wrist. It doesn’t seem to do much. Brian hits again, with knuckles now, and they drive into the intersect of ribs in the center of Pat’s chest. It aches.

“Leave right now or I swear to God—” 

“You can hit me if you want,” Pat says steadily. “But I’m not fucking leaving. Tell me what’s wrong.” 

A shuddering breath. “—I swear to God, Pat, I’ll n-never fucking speak to you again.”

The threat doesn’t chill Pat as much as it should, because it sounds so much like a sob, and he doesn’t know what Brian is planning to do tonight but it doesn’t look good, all right. “Then it’s going to be a long fucking night of staring at each other, I guess. You’re not getting rid of me without calling the cops, kid.” 

The furious face in front of him trembles. Heavy breath. Glaring green eyes. Then Brian collapses, literally  _ collapses _ , straight down to the floor, and Pat is so surprised he doesn’t even catch him.  

“Hey, hey,” he murmurs and crouches down, as the kid sobs. “Shh. Hey, dude, just—just calm down, okay. Tell me what’s happening. No matter how bad it is. We’ll figure it out.” 

The hands ripping at Brian’s hair, his face, are hard to catch, to pull away. Eventually Pat manages it, to reveal the tear-stained face, desperate with strain. 

“I’m sorry,” the kid moans wetly. “But you can’t—you can’t stay—please, please,  _ god  _ don’t stay— it’s not safe—” 

“ _ Why _ , Brian?” 

“You won’t believe me,” Brian breathes, “and we don’t have time. I’m already late.” 

“For what?” 

Something shifts in Brian’s face—jumps, jerks—and Pat doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all, and he reaches out an impulsive hand to touch his cheek.  

Brian catches it, in that bruising grip again. Pat winces as the bones of his wrist grind together.  

“Patrick,” Brian says, and his voice is shifting. Still terror-stricken, but also louder. Less teary. “Listen to me. If you’re going to stay here, you have to—h-have to—to swear—” 

“I’ll do it, whatever it is,” Pat agrees immediately. 

“—you have to s-swear you won’t let me loose. Until morning. Okay?” 

“What?”  

By way of explanation, maybe, Brian stands up, limbs unfurling quickly. He pulls open the bedside drawer and jerks out something metallic—

this is all so weird that some dumb soap opera part of Pat freezes, because  _ is he going to—  _

but it’s not a knife, it’s  _ handcuffs _ , which is even  _ more  _ insane —  

and Brian’s clasped one half around his own wrist, and the other end to the base of the iron-wrought bedframe, and busies himself checking if they’re secure.  

It’s such a fucking  _ weird  _ thing to do, so random and terrifying and bizarre and beyond any of the things that Pat expected to happen next, that the response which tears out of Patrick’s mouth in dazed confusion is “Dude, what if you have to pee?” 

Brian stares at him, and laughs, and it’s a hysterical sad laugh like a hyena but at least it’s something. “I—I haven’t figured that part out yet. Guess we’ll see.” 

Pat sits on the edge of the bed. He’s too far for Brian to reach, but the kid still eyes him, acutely uncomfortable, as if he’s rested the blade of a knife on his throat. Pat switches to sitting cross-legged, on the floor. “I don’t understand.” 

“No,” Brian agrees, and he’s fucking with something else from the drawer. “W-when—when it’s morning, the key’s here. Please, though. Not until it’s over.” 

“Okay. When will… _ it _ …start?”  

“Not until I fall asleep,” Brian admits, haunted. “I used to be able to stay up. To stop it. But now—I can’t—I’m so tired, Pat. So fucking tired. Once I nearly—I can’t trust myself.” 

“Nearly what…?” 

“Hurt someone,” he sighs, ripping his glasses off and shoving them in the drawer. He’s kicking off his shoes, his socks. Unbuckles his pants and pulls them straight down, surprising Pat. “Sorry,” he grimaces. “I know it’s rude. I’ll stay in a tshirt and boxers but—” 

“You do you,” Pat breathes, as Brian strips quickly. He tucks his wallet, his phone, his keys in the drawer, and flings the clothes away carelessly to a rumpled pile.  

Brian then seats himself on the bed, matching Pat’s pose, save for the one arm gripping the bar above his shoulder. Although he looks sad and wan and scared and like he’s nearly fallen apart, he does give a little smile. “This is going to suck. Sorry.” 

“Laura said you screamed,” Pat says, suddenly. “The first time. Should I—try to wake you, or—” 

“Don’t touch me.” Brian is sharp. “Don’t come close.” Then he sighs. “You won’t want to, anyway. I don’t scream that much anymore.” 

“All right.” 

They sit, staring at each other, in companionable, miserable, terrified silence for a few minutes, until Pat suggests, “Um. Do you want to like, watch some TV until you conk out, or…?” 

“You’ve gotta get the remote, then,” Brian says, pulling at his wrist and the gallows humor here, on the face of whatever wretched precipice he’s stuck on, makes Pat snort. “And I think I probably owe you the right to pick the channel.” 

Pat does—he picks  _ Gettysburg _ , because it’s a feel-good movie for him, for reasons he can’t explain—and for a while, it’s almost like they’re just spending an evening together. They don’t do it often, but every now and again, when Brian needs help on a script, or Pat’s gotten hopelessly behind on a deadline, they’ll pull an all-nighter and hash it the fuck out. Taking turns frantically working and goofing off, and either the work gets done or something stupid happens, and either is okay with Pat. 

In solidarity, Pat gets undressed too—just to match, shirt and shorts—and gets as comfortable as he can in this trashy room not on the bed. Brian’s thrown the two pillows down to Pat solicitously, so his own skinny body is just rammed up against the iron headboard. Pat watches him out of the corner of his eye, the way his head keeps snapping itself back up, looking uneasily at Pat, and then fuzzing out again in desperate exhaustion.  

Pat contemplates what he’s going to do if nothing happens—no screaming, no thrashing, no big theatrical night terrors or sleepwalking episodes—and Brian just sleeps through the night and unlocks himself and continues laboring under the delusion that something unspeakable is happening to him in the darkness.  

As he spaces out over the credits, he sees Brian’s body jerk in his peripheral vision. 

His eyes snap over, but the kid is still again. It’s a minute or two—long enough that Pat wonders if he imagined it. 

Brian jerks. But this time, Pat’s looking, and it’s unmistakable, and at the same time as the jerk something like a shadow shoots across his blank features.  

The moans, when they start, are almost worse than screaming.  

It’s little hitching sounds, but Brian’s face isn’t scrunched up in tears. His expression is open, flat, and the keening whines like a dog in pain shake themselves out around clenched teeth. Pat’s palms start to sweat, some instinctive reaction to the sound. Like scraping bone on bone. Like a scream in the dark. Like a sound his distant pre-human ancestors couldn’t explain, but knew to run from. 

The tremor is back—it was always there, all day—but it’s visible now, slowing in frequency, roiling through Brian like a muscle spasm through his whole body. The kid gasps and pants, thrashes, makes the same aborted choking sound, over and over. His wrist is pulling at the cuff—involuntary, just from the violence—blankets and sheets are long since on the floor. 

He still doesn’t seem awake, though, despite all the movement. This is a hell of a nightmare, Pat thinks.  

Then, Brian turns, and his eyes are open, and they’re red— 

not red like  _ that _ , like they’re sleepless and bloodshot — 

but actually  _ red _ , like the irises are filled with blood. 

“Brian—” Pat’s on his feet, before he even realizes what he’s done, reaching out a hand— 

Brian snarls, and snaps, and his  _ teeth  _ — 

“ _ Fuck _ .”  

The kid’s face is twisted. It looks...painful, and furious, and wild, and his eyes don’t move the way they… they should. And his  _ teeth _ … 

“B-Brian?” 

There’s some hitch at this. It’s not recognition, not exactly, but there’s roll, a shake of hesitation, in Brian’s shoulders, and then—

the skinny body that is  Brian’s-and-not-Brian’s slams forward—

and Pat’s stumbling back— 

and there’s pain, wet blood in his eyes— 

he’s blinded, for a second—

shoving himself back, against the wall— 

there’s a crash— 

Pat dashes his hair and the blood away, and looks up, sees Brian’s body shoving, ripping, yanking hard against the cuff, scrambling, fighting. Fighting to get at Pat.  

Brian’s uncuffed hand— his  _ claws _ —are coming toward Pat’s face. They can’t get there but they’re trying, reaching, swiping. Brian’s knocked the lamp off the side table, and his mouth is open in a snarl and the growls he’s making are bloodthirsty and terrible and it’s awful, awful to see the fangs and the red eyes and the animalistic way he looks.  

There’s a long while where Patrick is frozen, back against the wall, maybe a foot out of reach of Brian’s most violent lashes, and he’s just bleeding and wiping away blood and staring and staring and trying not to scream. 

The thing that is kind of Brian isn’t calming down. If anything, it’s growing more and more frenzied—he’s going to break his arm, if he keeps pulling like this. As it grows more furious and pulls harder and growls louder it’s staring directly at Pat’s face—not into his  _ eyes  _ though, not with recognition or kindness or a smile or even with that wretched fear—Pat gets the unshakeable feeling that it doesn’t care about his gaze so much as it cares about the bright red crease of leaking blood

There’s a thud. Brian’s pulling so hard that the whole bed—which is attached to the fucking wall, by the way—moves. Something is breaking—

fear grips Pat’s chest— 

the way he’s being looked at—

like he’s creature that’s way too weak to be afraid of—

like it’s only a few moments before his blood is in that terrible mouth—

it unfreezes him, at last.  

Pat scrambles away, along the wall, swearing. He makes it into the bathroom, locks the door, and vomits.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> srry to leave in such DRAMA i was gonna post next chap today but i have one scene to fix so that we all get some Emotional Resolution for the mystery bit.
> 
>  
> 
> then we can move from part 1: what is wrong with brian to part 2: what else is wrong with bri--WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PAT JESUS.


	6. the belly of the whale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust - and den die.
> 
>  
> 
> **— Herman Melville**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: explicit reference to suicidal ideation

It’s a while, before Pat gets himself together. 

He has to clean up the slashes on his head, three parallel cuts along his temple and across his forehead to his eyebrow. They’re not that deep—maybe could use a stitch, the worst one—but enough that it’s minutes of pressure to get them to stop leaking blood into his eyes.  

His shirt goes in the trash, because it’s covered in blood and vomit. He brought a sweatshirt, so if he ever manages to get out of this bathroom he won’t have to ride the subway shirtless back to Manhattan. 

It’s hard to make his hands stop shaking so he can clean up the floor. He can still hear sounds. The sounds are wretched, because although they’re less frantic than they were when Pat was in the room, they suggest to him that this is real. Pat’s nightmares do not usually have auditory atmosphere. He hopes to fucking god the cuff will hold, because he doesn’t want to find out what Brian can do to this flimsy interior door. 

Pat throws the towel in the trash too, because it’s also wet with blood and probably this Rodeway Inn doesn’t want to deal with bleaching that shit out. They’ve got better things to do. Like dealing with Pat’s body.

Shakily, he leans both hands against the sink and looks at himself. He half expects his reflection to reach out and try to strangle him as well.  

Quickly, he pinches his nose and pops his ears, like he used to do when he was a kid, with the nightmares. They pop like normal. Fuck. He’s not asleep, then.  

After a few long minutes of staring, and puking once more, and pushing away the thought of Brian’s face for the fourth time, Pat decides that he might as well get a bath, to get the fucking blood off. He turns on the tap, and it’s good, because it’s loud, and it muffles the monstrous sounds a bit.  

Sliding into the hot water is a relief, but it encourages his thoughts to run wild and free, and all they want to do is go round and round. He can’t make progress on what is happening, or what to do, or what it means, or how he feels, so eventually his brain just runs out its adrenaline burst into a some frantic, circular liminal state and he ends up, surprisingly, asleep. 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it’s just in his dream, but Pat thinks he’s awoken by someone saying his name. 

He starts up, listens. There’s no scraping outside anymore. No thumping. No sound, except—  

it’s soft, but it’s unmistakably crying.  

Jagged sobs, wet sniffs, but mostly just the quiet space between, of someone who’s been at it for a long time. Pat stands up—it hurts, the crick in his neck, the throb in his face—and steps into his boxers, and unlocks the door, and pulls it open.  

Brian is balled up on the bed, limp, when Pat emerges. “...Kid?” 

“Pat—!” he starts up quickly, voice hoarse but desperately hopeful. He throws himself toward Pat. He’s unlocked himself, clearly. He’s stumbling forward like a zombie, reaching out a trembling hand that’s pink with smeared blood. 

Pat flinches back. He regrets it immediately, how much it crushes the kid. 

The expression on Brian’s face isn’t deadly fierce anymore. He’s just exhausted, and beat-up, and red from crying. It becomes, all of a sudden, so terribly sad that it scares Pat almost as much as the fangs.  

Brian draws away, pulls his hand back. “I’m—God—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please—” He backs himself all the way to the bed. Sits on his hands. Looks down. Draws a shaking breath. “Of course—you can—you  _ should  _ go—”  

“I’m not leaving.” 

Pat shoves away his cowardice, and his nausea, and his questions, and sits right next to Brian on the bed and puts both arms around him.  

Brian stiffens, and then loosens. Moans in relief and lets his head fall in his hands. His normal, now human hands. 

They both hitch shaky breaths, for a bit, and mumble at each other without really talking. “Thank you—thank you—thank you Pat—god—thank you.” “It’s all right. It’ll be all right. I’ve got you.” Eventually, Brian masters his tears, and Pat wipes his eyes. He’s bleeding again, just a little.

Brian touches him. “I hurt you.” 

“I got too close,” Pat says. “It was just a scratch.” 

“It bled a lot,” Brian indicates the stains on the cheap brown carpet. “I wasn’t sure if—I didn’t—I thought you left. I hoped I didn’t…get you too badly.” 

“Just a scratch,” Pat repeats. “I’ll know better next time.” 

At this, Brian looses a shocked wail and clutches onto Pat’s chest. He’s shaking, and sobbing, all over again, although there are no tears left in him and the sound is horribly dry. “You would—you’ll—you can’t, Pat—” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Pat grabs Brian’s shoulder, hard. “And you’re doing this at my place tomorrow. You’re gonna get bedbugs, staying in a place like this.” 

Brian sobs a laugh into his chest, and nods.  

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s not hard for Pat to manufacture a lie to explain the scratches. His coworkers buy it: with Brian corroborating, there’s no reason to doubt that he stopped to help a stray and it went crazy on his face. And if it’s bizarre, the idea that a feral cat could make claw marks that big, no one mentions it.  

It’s harder to figure out what to text at Laura, when she checks in. 

> **how bri this week? we miss him <3**

He tries to find a lie with a hint of truth in it.

> **Hes ok  
> ** **Bit of a breakthrough, actually  
> ** **Nightmares still suck but hes not screaming as much anymore**

Pat shoves the phone back in his pocket and looks over at Brian. He’s pretending to work again—or actually, maybe working at least a little. He looks tired, and his hands are shaking, and Pat knows that now both wrists are ripped to shreds—but he’s breathing easier, just a little bit.  

They leave together, at five on-the-dot, because Pat needs to grab a few things for tonight, and also food, on the way home. Brian isn’t hungry, but he at least picks the pepperonis off the pizza and eats those.  

It’s kind of a trick, to get a chain wrapped around the fire escape, and threaded through the window, and then the pair of bike locks around Brian’s ankle. It’s cold, because he can’t shut the window all the way, and Brian is shivering in a wifebeater and gym shorts.  

“I fuck up my clothes,” he explains, while Pat is taping a piece of cardboard over the gap for insulation. “Not every time, but usually.”  

“Got it,” Pat says. “Here.” He makes a pile of blankets and pillows, so that the kid doesn’t have to sit on the hardwood and freeze his ass off all night. “Gimme a second to get the TV in here. And call your damn sister.” 

Brian does. It’s short, but she makes him laugh. Then he and Pat play games for an hour and don’t talk about anything important. It’s fucking good to hear Brian laugh again.  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Tonight was the last night,” Brian whispers into the fuzz of dawn through Pat’s grey curtains. 

“Yeah?” They’re both lying down. Pat’s on his bed, pushed far into the corner of the room, against his closet. Brian’s on the floor, head on a pile of partially-destroyed blankets, knee hitched up to point at the ceiling. Charlie is scratching at the closed bedroom door, indignant at being put out for the night. Pat wants to let him in, now that morning’s here, but there’s still some blood on the floor and the last thing he needs right now is a cat with a taste for human blood. 

“That’s why it was so bad. But usually I stay out one more night. Or two. To be safe.” 

Pat finds it easier to ask questions of the ceiling. He tries to make his voice sound lightly curious and kind and not at all afraid. “This started in February?” 

“Yeah. It didn’t—it didn’t start like this.” 

“How’d it start?” 

“Just nightmares. Bad ones but, you know. Just really bad nightmares. And these muscle spasms, in the night. Like cramps. God, they hurt, Pat.”  

“You went to the doctor?” 

“Yeah. They thought I was—I dunno. Stressed. Gave me some sleeping meds.” 

Pat frowns. “That’s bullshit. Although this is a bit wild. It’s certainly not fucking  _ insomnia. _ ” 

Brian makes a stifled sound. “I didn’t really give them a chance. I—was afraid—well, I dunno. I didn’t understand what I was dealing with. Until the third time—” His voice breaks.  

“Hmm?” 

“I had been just— afraid of the pain, and the nightmares, but then— when the pain lets up, it’s so much  _ worse,  _ Pat.” 

“Worse how?” 

“It makes me feel good.  _ Really  _ good. I lose myself. But I know I’m…fast. And strong. And  _ hungry _ .”  

Pat props himself up on an elbow, to look. “Jesus Christ, kid. This shit happened in  _ April _ ?”

“It was only for a minute,” Brian’s voice breaks. “thank God. I lost a couple minutes of time.” 

Pat steels himself. He wants to ask. Maybe he doesn’t want to know. But if the kid hasn’t told anyone in half a year, then he’s not going to do it on his own. “How’d you know you were dangerous?” 

Brian’s voice is a trembling husk. “I was standing over Zuko—he was all puffed up — I could have  _ killed  _ him, Pat. I think I—I think I wanted to.” There are probably tears on Brian’s face, Pat thinks. 

Pat lets out a long breath. This kid. This poor kid nearly killed his fucking cat in April. No wonder he looks like death. “That’s fucking terrifying.”  

“I thought I was going insane,” Brian admits. “I looked up—I don’t know. Violent sleepwalking. PTSD. Everything. But nothing explains— t-the claws.” 

He lifts his head, looks at Pat’s face with a pained expression. It’s wrong, that he’s so guilty. “Stop moping, kid, I always wanted a roguish scar. It’ll suit me.”

Brian sobs a laugh. It’s not much, but it’s enough for Pat to change the subject.  

“This is why you were staying up at E3? ” 

“Yeah.” Brian winces. “If I stay up—I get tired,  _ real  _ tired—but I was trying, for a while. If I pop some uppers and try to stay awake, I don’t— ch-change.”

“Ah. But you stopped that?”

Brian nods miserably. “It’s too risky. It’s like—80 to 100 hours. I get so fucking tired. I might micronap. Did you know you can sleep standing up? I kept catching myself. On the subway, once. Just eyes started to close, thoughts drifted, and—boom. It…it almost started. I can’t trust myself to not fall asleep on my desk and slaughter the whole office.” 

Pat doesn’t know if he’s ever stayed up for more than two days in a row. Let alone that, accompanied with blinding pain. And thinking you’re maybe going crazy. And your body shifting, changing. And fearing you’re going to wake up over the body of your cat or your sister or your coworker, with blood dripping from your mouth. It’s a horrible and reasonable fear, and Pat pushes away from it. 

“Are you aware at all? When you’re—like that?” 

“Not—well.” Brian hitches a sound like retching. “Sometimes. It goes in and out. I’ll have a flash—see myself doing something—feel it but it’s not enough to, um. Stop myself.”

“ _ Shit _ ,” Pat says, because he can’t think of an answer to that question that would have been worse. 

“I thought about killing myself,” Brian admits. “I still haven’t decided.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Pat growls. “You’re not allowed to kill yourself.” 

“But what if it gets worse?” His voice is choked. “It’s already been getting worse. What if I get stronger?”  

“Let me handle that,” Pat avows. “We’ll figure this out.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


While Pat’s rooting through the kid’s things looking for band-aids—he’s  _ not  _ fucking snooping, okay, not this time—he’s not even feeling particularly guilty about lying to Laura. Then he finds the valentines.

> **_TO_** _: bdg_ ** _FROM_** _: lkg_ _  
> _**_YOU ARE A FOX_** _  
> _ _which by the way stands for friggin. outstanding. xylophonist. yes i know that you dont play xylophone but the only other option was to compliment you on your skills making photocopies. i bet you could play the hell out of a xylophone though. i love you._

They’re little cardstock things, goofy, colorful, with animals printed on them. Pat remembers that kind of thing from elementary school. There’s not much space to add notes, but Laura’s handwriting is small. After Pat picks up the first one that falls out of the bag, curious, he knows he shouldn’t read any more.

> **_TO_ ** _ : bdg  _ **_FROM_ ** _ : lkg & jonah _
> 
> **_~~I~~ _ ** _ we  _ **_LIKE YOU BEARY MUCH_ **
> 
> _ are you still writing that song with bear puns?? if you have more to test on me i will grin and bear it. i said i didn’t like it but that was a bear-faced lie. also jonah thinks it should be named “Ursula.” we love you. _

They’re all in the front pocket, together, next to Brian’s keys and his wallet. They’re a little worse for the wear, some of them. Pat hates himself for it, but he digs each one out with trembling fingers.

> **_TO_ ** _ : bdg  _ **_FROM_ ** _ : lkg _
> 
> **_YOU’RE A HOOT_ ** _ and a half _
> 
> _ whoooooo could ever make me laugh more than you? whooooo would understand my in-jokes? whoooooooo would let me start in goooooooofy youuuuuuuutube videos? you’re my ticket to internet fame. i love you. _

The wave of guilt hits him in the lower back, a sloshing ache. They were both worried. Pat watched. He pried. He pushed. He grabbed. He yelled. He got lucky. But he didn’t do  _ this _ . 

> **_TO_ ** _ : bdg  _ **_FROM_ ** _ : lkg _
> 
> **_HOW ABOUT A HEDGE HUG_ **
> 
> _ i  _ _ will _ _ hug you <3 <3 <3 no matter how much you need to hedge. you can  _ **_weasel_ ** _ away. it’s okay if you’re  _ **_chicken_ ** _. its okay if you  _ **_duck_ ** _ my kisses or  _ **_bat_ ** _ them away. i know sometimes i  _ **_axolotl_ ** _ you, but please keep letting me hug you when i feel scared. i love you. _

He might have cracked the case but she’s the one doing all the fucking work. 

> **_TO_ ** _ : bdg  _ **_FROM_ ** _ : lkg _
> 
> **_IM SO VERY FAWNED OF YOU_ **
> 
> _ i got nothing for this one. just I LOVE YOU. thank you for talking to me a little. stay safe out there bambi. _

Pat tucks the little papers back in the front pocket. Pulls out his phone. “Set a reminder to call Laura.” He’s not going to tell her. He doesn’t think he can. But he can probably ask her for help. 

 

 

 

  
  
~~~~act 1: departure~~~~  
~~~~act 2: initiation~~~~  
  


There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

**\- Sylvia Plath**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


You’d be surprised what you can get used to. 

What you can enjoy, even. Some people get into atonal jazz. Plenty of people drink gin. Some people sign up to spend three months cramped underwater, out of contact except a round-the-clock watch for the nuclear launch codes that could destroy all the world except your own stupid submarine.

Compared to  _ that _ , the next few months are pretty normal, actually. 

Brian comes over for about a week, sometimes longer. It’s fucking nice, to have someone else in his house—Pat’s never made the place presentable enough to have people over, but with Brian it doesn’t really matter. Beggars can’t be choosers. 

Pat finds out how fucking good Brian is at platformers, and how absolutely trash he is at first-person shooters, mostly because he hasn’t got the attention span to switch guns properly. He finds out that the creative writing major at Johns Hopkins must be pretty buck-wild, because Brian got an A- on a paper that had the word “pussy”in it, and the minus wasn’t for quoting Kanye West but for failing to draw a clear enough parallel between his life and that of Lord Byron. He finds out that Brian doesn’t have a plan, at least not one that he’ll admit to. He finds out that Brian likes gin. 

“Thank  _ god _ ,” Pat lets his head fall back onto the sofa in melodramatic relief. “At least someone will drink it. Simone keeps giving me bottles and I feel like a hoarder, but none of them fucking  _ taste good. _ ”

“You should at least try the Botanist one,” Brian advises. “Mix it with something. You’ll acquire a taste.”

He’s never done it for Simone, but he humors Brian, mostly just to watch him craft elaborate cocktails and scowl about it the whole time, saying things like  _ this isn’t even for mixing  _ while dousing out the abomination of floral bitterness with syrup and citrus. 

“Okay, next time I come I’m bringing the turmeric,” Brian nods to himself, satisfied. “You’ll like it.” 

“Can I hold you to that? Next time?”

Brian doesn’t make a lot of promises, not really. Brian says that optimism is dangerous. Brian says that actions are more important than words. Brian says  he can’t possibly predict who he’ll be in the future. Brian says making resolutions is tempting fate. Brian doesn’t like to lie. 

“I can’t be sure that you’ll like it,” Brian eyes him. “But I promise I’ll bring it.”

“Thanks.” 

You’d be surprised what you can get used to. Three months later, Pat’s drinking gin straight (although Brian says it’s still “beginner gin”), and Brian’s sick days are at least somewhat under control, and those strange bloody eyes are becoming quite familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you kind kind readership of my strange hero's journey. act 2 = initiation = is also 6 chaps = i will hammer out some final scenes so can post soon <3.  
> .  
> .  
> scroll down past Stromae's excellent song sommeil for warnings for act 2 and act 3.  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Tu pourras m'dire tout c'que tu veux  
> Sous tes fous rires et tes grands airs  
> C'est pas la peine  
> Tu peux mentir à qui tu veux..  
> Tu souris trop pour être heureux  
> Tu m'fais d'la peine  
> J't'aime quand même, moi  
> J'suis pas tes potes, ni ton boss ou tes collègues, moi  
> Tu m'prends vraiment pour un con!  
> Tu crois qu'tu m'endors  
> Mais même derrière ton masque,  
> Tes cernes en parlent encore
> 
> Tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Le froid, la soif, la dalle  
> T'as tout  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Ta mère, ta femme, ta fille  
> Y a nous  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Ton toit, ton taf, ta caisse  
> Tes sous  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> La vie, santé, bonheur  
> Avoue que  
> Tu n'as pas sommeil ! 
> 
> Si on sortait prendre l'air?  
> Au lieu d'me prendre pour de la merde  
> Prends-moi la main  
> Sinon à quoi on sert nous?  
> A part faire la fête  
> Mais j'l'ai assez faite, moi  
> On s'voit demain
> 
> Et si je comptais, je compterai pour toi  
> Je te compterai mes histoires et je compterai les moutons pour toi  
> Et si je comptais, je compterai pour toi  
> Je te compterai mes histoires et je compterai les moutons pour toi
> 
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Le froid, la soif, la dalle  
> T'as tout  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Ta mère, ta femme, ta fille  
> Y a nous  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> Ton toi, ton taf, ta caisse  
> Tes sous  
> Mais tu n'as pas sommeil !  
> La vie, santé, bonheur  
> Avoue 
> 
> .  
> .  
> .  
> fics 2 and 3 in this series (initiation & return) will both contain  
> \- **violence:** explicit, depicted in the narrative, including blood and injury, injury to an animal, and mentions of domestic violence  
> \- **mental illness:** explicit talk about suicide including detailed mentions of attempts, symptoms of depression, and discussion in-fiction of how to deal with it. the characters don't always make good decisions.  
> \- **noncon:** one scene that is unambiguously a violent rape scene. several scenes of dubcon, coercion, non-communication, and exploitation between our romantic leads. even if you trust me that the ending is happy, don't read it if you do not want to have strong questions about consent and doubts about whether this relationship is healthy or abusive for both parties.


End file.
